Monthly Archives: November 2015

These Hints and tips are taken from my Game Guide, over a hundred pages of hints, tips, tricks and tactics that will help you get to grips with the finer points of the game, all for a paltry $2.99. However, if you use this link, you can get it for $1 off.

Frigates: Built for speed and maneuverability, Frigates can outrun and outmaneuver almost anything. But that agility comes at a price, as frigates suffer from restricted weapons coverage, a forward-facing fan shaped weapons-coverage arc. Frigates bring the fight to the enemy with great speed, but being small and light, they lack the armor to stay in the fight. For this reason, frigates tend to hunt in packs, and are often employed as escort ships for bigger ships. Frigates also have one of the highest sector speeds in the game, which makes them a great choice for deep-space reconnaissance.

In the late game, they are often used against destroyers; a fast-moving frigate is used as a distraction; to turn the destroyers so that they are facing the wrong direction when the heavy guns arrive within range. For this reason, Destroyer Captains have a particularly intense dislike for Frigates. The old saw about Frigates being bluish in color because of the Doppler shift caused by their high-speed retreats is just a vicious rumor circulated by disgruntled Destroyer Captains.

Enemy frigates have a tendency to head straight for their target and strafe in circles around it. A normal counter to this tactic is to keep moving; this stops their sideways motion and allows heavier weapons to be brought to bear against them.

Cruisers: If Destroyer captains dislike frigates, they positively hate cruisers. Pound for pound the most useful and dangerous ships in the game, their longer range and 270-degree coverage arc makes them particularly dangerous to destroyers caught with their pants down and pointing the wrong way. Boasting no less than seven hardpoints (Shield, Special x2, Hull x2 and Gun x2), they can be fitted with a rear thruster to improve straight-line speed, giving them “Rabid Rabbit” mass-weapon-evading capability second only to frigates. Their only weakness is the lack of rear-quarter weapons coverage, which gives rise to the old Cruiser-Captain saying that “Cruisers never run”.

Destroyers: Basically a light chassis built around a long gun, these ships are devastating at long range, but fragile and easily destroyed in a close-range knife-fight. As if that was not bad enough, only the most advanced Destroyers have a shield generator slot; the Longbow and Broadsword destroyers have no provision for shields, and are dependent on hull plating, maneuverability and moxie to keep them out of trouble.

Destroyers are the weapon of choice when attacking other bases, where the Destroyers’ range advantage really comes into its own. But while destroyers have the longest-range guns, this comes at a price; they have a narrow weapons-coverage arc, and are vulnerable to flanking by enemy ships. A heavily outgunned enemy frigate that can get outside of a Destroyer’s narrow engagement envelope can outmaneuver it and destroy it at leisure, as the destroyer cannot turn fast enough to bring its guns to bear, so destroyers always need support in FvF battles.

Due to their lack of speed and fragility, command of a shield-less Destroyer is often assigned as a punishment to a Frigate or Cruiser Captain who showed cowardice in battle.

Battleships: With an unmatched number of hardpoints – the base model, Rancor, sports nine, and the others go up from there), these ships unleash fearsome firepower on their enemies. Paradoxically, their greatest strength is also their biggest weakness: their bow-tie-shaped weapons-coverage arc gives them the ability to deliver truly awesome broadsides, but also leaves them vulnerable to attack from front and rear quarters. For this reason, Battleships prize the ability to turn swiftly in battle to bring their broadsides to bear – hence the common use of Rotation Thrusters – and the cry of “Turn and Burn!” being a common order from the bridge of a battleship.

One unique feature of this class is that they can deliver broadsides to both sides simultaneously. This means that Battleships are at their most dangerous in the thick of the battle, engaging two enemies at once. But all that firepower comes at a price; Battleships have only one shield slot.

Cutters: Designed for blockade-running, they are among the fastest ships in the game, but their poor maneuverability caused Fleet Admiral Douglas “Hitch-hiker” Adams to comment: “Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow.”

They are however, incredibly useful in situations where you need to bring the fight to the enemy. They were designed first and foremost to be Carrier-killers; to withstand the withering fire of a carrier’s squadrons and unload some serious firepower on that gargantuan hull, and the raw speed to bring that power to the enemy Carrier as quickly as possible. A fleet of cutters can bring the fight to a Carrier and bring one of those big fellows down with ease, particularly if augmented with rear thrusters – or better, Fusion thrusters, which help overcome the Cutters’ legendary inability to turn. They are also useful against Apocrypha Cruisers – few ships can outrun an Apocrypha Cruiser, but these can do so handily.

Carriers: The Carrier belongs to, and is currently the only occupant of, a very specialized class of ship – Flagship class. By definition, there can only be one flagship in a fleet. They are by far the largest ships in the game, and the slowest. Carriers do not have any conventional weaponry. Big, slow, ponderous and unarmed, a Carrier would be a sitting duck if it wasn’t for the two game-changing technologies that a Carrier brings to the battle:

Support Field: All Carriers have a support field that provides a boost for either shields or speed of friendly ships, and a corresponding handicap for enemy ships. It is not known precisely what happens when two opposing carriers’ fields intersect; either the universe will cease to exist, or the two fields will cancel each other out.

Squadrons: All carriers come with launchers for long-range squadrons. Squadrons come in several different flavors – Fighters, Bombers, and Interceptors. All are semi-autonomous drones which are launched from the carrier and home in on the nearest enemy ship. They will attack that ship until it is destroyed (in which case they will attack another enemy or return to the carrier) or they are destroyed (in which case another squadron is launched).

The Carrier is the ultimate long-range, stand-off weapon. Its long-range squadrons can reach out and touch enemy ships from a long way off. For this reason the canny player will always keep the enemy as far from the carrier as possible. In practice, this means beaming slow-moving enemies such as Battleships and Destroyers, and running away from faster enemies such as cruisers, frigates, and the Carrier Commander’s bane – Cutters.

I bought the $2 introductory offer (200 coins + 500 bonus coins) way back in January, then bought $5 worth of coins on 4/17, 5/8 and 5/29. In early June, after a mis-click in the game cost me a bunch of coins, I sent a request to Kixeye support. I also asked the following question:

If I may make a suggestion, it might be a good idea to implement a confirmation dialog for >50 (say) coins spent. The lack of such a feature is costing Kixeye money: it is precisely because it is to easy to mis-click and waste large quantities of coins that I only purchasing coins in $5 tranches instead of $10 or $20. Please pass this along to the developers…

The following day I got a reply:

Translation: “It ain’t gonna happen, and we don’t care”. It is also a completely bogus answer, as the majority of users with coins in their accounts would rather not accidentally spend them. And a “one-time courtesy” along with an exhortation to be cautious is simply not good enough.

I haven’t purchased any more coins from Kixeye since then, and I don’t think I will. My Commerce Center turns out 14 coins a day, which is enough for me.

A few days ago the good folks at Kixeye rolled out some improvements to Vega Conflict: The first and most obvious change is a new screen layout: The “Blueprints” icon has been moved from the bottom-left menu to the top right of the screen. It has been replaced with the “crafting” icon, which gives you direct access to the Workshop.

Other changes:

Good News: Blood Amber icon moved from top left to right. Bad News: your Blood Amber balance is no longer shown – you have to open the Blood amber screen to see your balance.

Good News: It is more possible to reach the Fleet Management screen from planet and sector view without going through Base View. Bad News: “Recent Hulls” is only available in base view. There is no good reason for this, so I assume that it is a bug that will be fixed in the next upgrade.

In sector view, planet pop-up shows level of next spawn.

Crafting Dependencies on Event hulls have now been removed. This means that I can now upgrade my Ragnarok Carrier without have to unlock the Valhalla, for example. I am glad that they fixed this one.

They got rid of that ridiculous “Claim” screen when opening a strongbox – hurrah!

Over the past hundred years, feminism has made a lot of advances for women.

This is, on the whole, a good thing.

But recently, it seems like the costs of this equality have been borne increasingly by men.

No-fault divorce has allowed women to walk away from the marriage while keeping most of the benefits of being married; the majority of divorces are filed by women. Women therefore have a financial incentive to divorce.

The mother of the unborn child has the choice to abort, legally abandon, or give up for adoption. The father of the unborn child has no choice, only the court-mandated obligation to pay child support for up for eighteen years. The mother is under no obligation to spend any of that money on the child.

Women get custody of children 85% of the time. Men are expected to pay, based on what the court thinks they should earn (“imputed income”), and if they cannot, they are jailed.

Women can easily demand child support while denying access to children by the mere allegation of abuse.

At least a quarter of domestic violence victims are male, but they get no attention, resources or media coverage.

Men are many times more likely to be assaulted than women, and many times more likely to be killed.

Paternity rights are a mess, and women abuse then with impunity. Paternity fraud is rampant and unabated – between one million and two million American Males are unwittingly raising another man’s child.

Four out of five suicides are male.

The men’s rights movement (MRM) arose to draw attention to these and other injustices perpetrated against men.

I am not a supporter of the MRM. I consider them to be a bunch of unattractive/elderly/neck-bearded “gentlemen” whose approach seems to be limited to protests beseeching for their rights and needs to be taken into consideration. Their grievances are real, but their methods are, in my opinion, weak and ineffective, since it involves women doing things that are not in their interest (for instance, ending Paternity Fraud, or reforming No-fault Divorce).

The fact is, women like to control the narrative. And the narrative is a simple one: woman good, man bad. Woman victim, man abuser/rapist/violent. Mother wonderful/caring/nurturing, Father lazy/no-good/loser. That is the clarion-call of the media and the trump of feminism. Men are being raised without fathers and masculinity is being demonized in the eyes of the next generation of men.

This leads me to the subject of this post. Cassie Jaye, a film-maker (and a feminist) set out to make a documentary on the MRM, called “The Red Pill”. During her research, she made a surprising discovery… that the MRM was not about oppressing women, demolishing feminism, or misogyny. She discovered that these fellows were misunderstood, and had a point. And what was originally intended to be a hatchet-piece turned into something else.

And that’s when her funding, mostly from feminist organizations, dried up. Apparently they didn’t want anything to challenge their preconceived narrative.

So she decided to go it alone. I discovered her, through this article. I then checked out her Kickstarter, and read her story. I found out that her intentions are good, her story is plausible, and her movie needs to be made.